Rohingya children’s future look bleak, help them: Priyanka

Bollywood actress and Unicef Goodwill Ambassador Priyanka Chopra says Rohingya children can have a chance at a future with help from all because right now, she thinks, their future is bleak.

“For a lot of the Rohingya children, this ordeal will leave them scarred, physically and emotionally, for the rest of their lives. With your help, maybe these children can have a chance at a future,” she said on Tuesday.

Priyanka reiterated her call that the world needs to care. “We need to care. Please lend your support.”

“Across the river is Myanmar. It’s empty now, but a few months ago this area, known as “Sabrang,” was filled with hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees fleeing Myanmar,” she wrote on her verified Facebook page.

Their trip here, she said, was filled with many hardships and tremendous danger and many of them made their journey on foot, walking for days through the hills, then floating across the Naf River or the Bay of Bengal on make shift boats.

“Many of them injured, pregnant, elderly, etc. Their ordeal didn’t end here…after entering Bangladesh, they would often have to wait for days, sleeping in the open fields with no food or water, for aid workers to reach them,” she wrote.

Priyanka visited a number of Rohingya camps in Teknaf upazila of the district. She first visited the camp set up at Hariyakhali Anchor point under Sabrang union of Teknaf upazila.

Hariyakhali is known as the entrance point from which these refugees entered Bangladesh from Myanmar.

Priyanka, from Hariyakhali, went to Ledha camp, where she visited a child development centre established by Unicef.

She also visited the camp in Unchiprang area, where around 30,000 Rohingya people are currently staying.On Monday, the Bollywood actress, now on a four-day visit (May 21-24), has sought support for Rohingya children saying these kids are their future and the world needs to care about them.

“These children are at the forefront of this humanitarian crisis, and they desperately need our help,” she said while visiting Rohingya camp in Cox’s Bazar district.

Hours after her arrival here in Dhaka on May 21, she left for Cox’s Bazar by a private airlines flight.

She said the world saw horrific images of ethnic cleansing from the Rakhine State of Myanmar. This drove nearly 700,000 Rohingyas across the border into Bangladesh – 60 percent of them children.

“Many months later, they are still vulnerable, living in crowded camps with no idea when or where they will ever belong to…even worse, when they will get their next meal,” she wrote on her Facebook page.

And, she added, as they finally start settling and feeling a sense of safety, monsoon looms, threatening to destroy all that they have built so far.

“This is an entire generation of children that have no future in sight. Through their smiles I could see the vacancy in their eyes,” Priyanka wrote.

After spending two days in Cox’s Bazar, Priyanka, who was named a global Unicef Goodwill Ambassador, after serving as a National Goodwill Ambassador to India for 10 years, is scheduled to return to Dhaka on Thursday and leave Dhaka in the evening on the same day.